


where the hero shifts

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [215]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Family Drama, Gen, High Kings, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Procedures, Trauma, title from Siken, what the authors call Healing Arc begins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23589355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: It always comes down to bitter, innocent love.They should have known two nights past: Fingon would never have accepted a word; a promise. Not for Maedhros. Not ever again.
Relationships: Aredhel & Fingon | Findekáno, Aredhel & Turgon of Gondolin, Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Fingon | Findekáno, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Turgon of Gondolin, Finrod Felagund | Findaráto & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [215]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 17
Kudos: 39





	1. Turgon

Turgon still believes in God.

He wishes he did not, when his hands shake with the memory of holding his wife, his daughter, his mother. It would grant him greater numbness, if not ease: facing the world with an empty soul. To become what one looks upon _is_ a sort of defiance. Such defiance—for good or ill—survives long.

So does anger.

He should have known that he would be angry at Fingon, when Fingon died. Now that he has seen one brother’s corpse, rolling and thrashing in Fingon’s frantic hands, Turgon can well imagine Fingon’s body in _his_ hands.

He would shake those square shoulders, curse that square face (Fingon’s face is never ruined by death, in this vision), and he would say,

 _You fool, you fool, you fool_.

But because he saw Argon die, because he saw Mama die, because he felt his touch leave Idril’s delicate warm body—

He never guessed that he would not _know_ the manner of his older brother’s death.

The cramped quarters of their encampment are cloying to him. They do not appear to have such an effect on everyone else. The stubborn tatters of Fingolfin’s household, the watchful wanderers under Haleth’s lead, and the rescued thralls mill and bond like frightened children. This is a place of safety, Turgon knows, because his father is here.

Where Fingolfin abides, so does security. The winter did not kill them all, and though the savage cold had no respect for the greatness of a single man, Turgon will forever credit his father’s level head for leading them a little farther, a little farther, until those that remained were saved.

Fingon threw that protection away with the same pure-hearted stupidity he has lived by since—since _birth_ , Turgon expects. Fingon has been a fool always.

Of course, Turgon did not know Fingon when he was born, and now, because Fingon fled under the cover of night, Turgon shall not know him when he dies.

Night is coming on again. The second night without his brother, though maybe only the first (or not even the first) since his brother has perished. There is a chance that Fingon yet lives.

There is no chance—no hope—that he is anything but lost.

All in pursuit of Maedhros! Turgon has never trusted Curufin, lynx-eyed and cruel even when he was barely in breeches. He has _hated_ Celegorm, who has ignored and humiliated him by turns. And Maglor is—Maglor is broken, that can be seen at a glance, but Turgon _will not pity him_.

Instead, he wants to rage,

_You could have been safe! You could have been with my father!_

But what Feanorian will ever care for that?

The last time Turgon saw Maedhros was in passing. He was in Fingolfin’s house, but only waiting at the door for Fingon to exchange coats or ugly hats or somesuch. They had been at a meeting elsewhere with their fathers. Turgon was not invited; it was still in question, in his mind, whether Uncle Feanor even knew that he existed.

Maedhros stood on the step, in beautiful riding boots that had not ridden, and a coat tailored so close that it made him look almost as slim as a woman. He was striking his gloves lightly against one palm. But he had ears like a cat—all that family did—and he heard Turgon hesitate in the hall.

“Hullo, cousin,” he said softly, nodding his bright head. “How goes it?”

Turgon was on his way to meet Elenwe, and wanted no part in something he could not attain. He hated that his tongue was tied by another’s greeting.

He nodded, once, twice, and said “Maitimo.”

And then he colored, embarrassed, raging at Fingon for putting the silly nickname in his head.

But Maedhros smiled, quick and cunning and then not so cunning at all, and he said, “Even your brother doesn’t call me that so much anymore, you know.”

Beneath his heel, Turgon grinds the ashes of a fire he should have kept alive. That cousin, that cunning, is three thousand miles and a lifetime gone.

Curufin and Celegorm and Maglor, in all their inner ugliness, were right.

Maedhros is dead, and it is no time to unbury him.

(Fingon had come running down the stairs, his hat mashed under his arm, and he had not even looked at Turgon as he passed into the outside world.)

“Have you even had any supper?” Aredhel asks. He considers snapping at her, but decides not to. She isn’t accusing him, not really.

He shakes his head.

“You should eat. Wachiwi made stew.”

Wachiwi is sweet on Fingon. She has borne up rather well, though, under the truth of his death. “I haven’t any appetite. And I won’t starve.”

“I know,” Aredhel says. “We’ll never starve again, in a land that doesn’t bring much winter.” She sits down beside him, elbows on her knees, and he considers snapping for another reason, for he has just remembered—

“You were with Celegorm.”

“What?”

“I saw you two come out of the woods together. The other night.”

Aredhel flushes—the arrow has hit its mark—but she doesn’t break his gaze. “And what of it? He came sneaking, I tracked him down.”

“And you didn’t kill him?”

“Oh, come off it. His father’s dead,” Aredhel said. “And you and I aren’t sorry for that, but—”

 _But Maedhros_. Maedhros at least, and maybe more—there was only one twin at the meeting in Mithrim—

“What had he to say for himself?”

“He’s Celegorm. Same as always.” But her voice shifts strangely, as if she is grieving, in the middle of speaking, that Celegorm is _not_ the same.

Night falls like that, hanging over them. Turgon concentrates on the anger settled behind his eyes. He is glad for his sister’s company—the only sibling he has left—though he fears she will draw Galadriel to join them.

He wants to speak to his father, but he doesn’t want to see the useless love for Fingon that will be written on his father’s face. 

Turgon and Aredhel are on the side of the camp that is farthest from Mithrim, and as such, they hear the wild shouts almost at first.

_Ho there! Ho there! Anyone, anyone!_

Hoarse, desperate.

A trap, in the form of a twisted plea?

Turgon has a gun and a knife. Aredhel has a number of hidden blades. They run together, and Turgon’s heart pounds _death_ , _death_.

But it isn’t death.

It is Fingon.

(Aredhel even says his name.)

How strange it is to see his brother living—living and so changed. Fingon is on his knees, bloodied in the torchlight that has already thronged around him. He is gasping wildly, brought low by his burden.

Turgon—Turgon understands in a pain-shocked instant, what that burden is. _Who_ it is.

It is the cruelest thing he could do, perhaps, to recognize his cousin Maedhros in that _thing._

“Father!” Turgon cries, because Father is the only one who can lead them away from _here_. “Father!”

 _My heart cannot break again_ , he tells himself, beneath all the rest. Beneath darkness, light, voices, cries. _Not now. We have no time for me!_

(If he touches Fingon, he fears that Fingon shall die right then and there.)

Fingolfin comes. There are others here—Finrod, even Haleth, and many more faces that Turgon has not the wits to make out. Yet Fingolfin looks like a king, in Turgon’s blurring eyes, though in truth he knows that his father has barely slept and barely eaten. The grey hair at his temples seemed to fade faster in the last week than it ever did in the years at home.

Turgon’s father has taken not just blows, but carvings, to his heart. He lost his wife; his youngest son. He lost all his children, insofar as they were once children at all—kept somewhat innocent by a mother’s care. Still, there is enough left in him for Fingon to core it out like this: Fingon, kneeling in one of his reckless prayers, saying, _take this cup away from me_ —but it is _Fingon_ , so he makes all that about Maedhros, and does so with a child’s simplicity.

Yes, Fingon is the only child left of them, and his words reflect it.

“Papa,” he begs. “Help him.”

Turgon watches his brother fall. Watches the arrowhead of torchbearers and alarm-callers, himself among them, rush forward to offer aid.

There is weary Gwindor with Maedhros in his arms, and there is Fingon in his father’s. Turgon’s eyes are fixed longest on his brother’s hands, which are still clenched as if they remain clinging and strong.

“My boy,” Father says (he is just Father again), “My boy—not you, not _you_! Never you, I pray God—I pray—”

“He lives!” Gwindor’s gruff voice rises again. “Fingon will live—”

And the crowd murmurs its approval, its relief. Turgon does not even know who is here, but somehow they have all become one gathered people.

 _Fingolfin’s_ people, grateful for the life of Fingolfin’s son.

 _He loves you more than he loves the rest of us, you fool_ , Turgon thinks, staring at Fingon’s still, square face. Oh, his face is very white beneath the blood. _Let him—let him save_ you! _What care we for—_

But he cannot lift his eyes to where Gwindor crouches. Cannot know Maedhros again.

Father rouses himself, lifting his head. “Turgon—Finrod—where is Turgon—”

“I am here,” Turgon hears himself answer. Finrod is there, too, standing as Father cannot, as Fingon cannot. Finrod is standing guard, and so is Aredhel, and so must Turgon be also.

_Prepare the way…make straight his paths…_

“Turgon,” Father says, rising. As he does so, he lifts Fingon in his arms as if he weighs nothing. As if Father _has_ eaten, _has_ slept, and is not worn and thin. “Take your brother and see to him. Aredhel, go with him.”

The crowd has fallen silent. Turgon blinks, trying to understand. His father is straight, and at full height—but his arms are shaking. Turgon throws his own out, and Aredhel joins in, and they take Fingon so that one of his arms is around Turgon’s shoulder and the other around Aredhel’s.

“We can drag him,” Aredhel mutters. She still sounds like herself. “Father, don’t be afraid. We’ll look after him.”

 _Of course_ , Turgon thinks. _Maedhros is dead, and the dead are always Father’s charge._

Fingon is—Fingon _lives_.

Three steps, four. They are away from the torches, picking their way in the dark. The heat stays in Turgon’s skin, somehow. In his eyes and throat.

“Lord, he smells foul.”

“Aredhel…”

“Turgon, you’re slipping. I can’t carry _all_ his weight.”

Turgon shuts his mouth. His brother’s matted hair, overlong and braided as if he never knew New York styles and civility at all, brushes against his cheek. “We should take him to the tent—the tent where that woman is.”

“Estrela? No. They’ll need that for—” Aredhel chokes. She sways, and lurches, and they nearly tumble down together.

For the first time, Turgon considers the possibility that his brother succeeded in his mad quest.

_Help him._

“This way, then,” he says curtly. “Aredhel, it’s your turn to do your part. Bear up.”

Turgon’s faith is far from being like Fingon’s. Turgon believes in God’s justice; Fingon in His mercy. Turgon wonders if, at present, they both measured wrong.

(There is a ring on his left hand, and a rosebud babe who will no longer be so small nor so sleepy as when he saw her last, if indeed he ever sees her again. There is a wife.)

(He left them.)

“Turgon! Aredhel!” Wachiwi arrives in a flash. Turgon knows her, even in the dark, by the sound of her voice and the faint scent of sage that attends her. They have traveled together for nearly a year. All those days were spent together. Wachiwi is a friend.

Wachiwi is more than a friend to Fingon.

The three of them are able to carry him to shelter in short order. Stretched on a tattered quilt that belongs to Wister, Fingon breathes deeply and evenly. Aredhel unbuttons his coat.

Wachiwi lights a lantern. “That’s exhaustion,” she says, stooping over him. “His spirit is very low. But he has no fever, and his face does not look like he is in pain.”

Turgon cannot see that much, in a sleeping face. He knots his fists and tries to thank her. The words don’t come.

“I’ll…are you needed elsewhere?” Wachiwi asks. “I’ll stay with him, if you like.”

“Oh, we can’t leave him,” Aredhel says. “We can’t, can we Turgon?”

Turgon nods, shakes his head, does not know how to convey that she is right. He sinks down on his haunches, to be closer to his brother, and that is answer enough for Aredhel.

Wachiwi rises, and dusts her hands against her breeches. “Then I shall leave you three,” she says. “Perhaps it would do to bathe his face and hands, though—shall I bring water?”

Aredhel assents to this. Turgon is still silent. He takes one of Fingon’s dirty hands, and folds it in both of his. He does not care if this is a childish thing to do.

It is cold outside, and they have no fire. This information arrives in his thoughts in shattered pieces, mingled with pieces of the past. He hates the curse of memory, as much as he hates this barren place—but now that he has had his brother returned to him, he must be more willing to pay that price anew.

Yes, Turgon must see himself shaking Fingon out of icy slumber, must feel _both_ his brothers’ arms around him, at the ash-heaped bridge.

How grief seemed to have taken hold of them _then_ , in those long-ago hours! Once because death seemed near; once because their family seemed so far.

 _Fingon_ was angry then, and Fingon was hurt. Turgon was, at the bridge, little more than an uncertain boy. In the despairing cold, he was something else—rage, yes; fear, certainly. But it was all so very different from their old life that his grief could be divided into floes kept apart by churning waters of need and hunger. 

Now, having survived beyond that, he has to face a world where their family—all their family—feeds itself to Death slowly, bit by bit.

Love by love.

It always comes down to bitter, innocent love.

They should have known two nights past: Fingon would never have accepted a word; a promise. Not for Maedhros. Not ever again.

Turgon does not realize that he has begun to weep until Aredhel snuffles into her own sleeve and rasps,

“One of us should try and stop bawling. Wachiwi will bring the water soon.”

“I hate him,” Turgon gasps. “I hate him—and he’s brought him _back_.”

His whole body curves like a jackknife, at that. He does not let go of Fingon’s hand, even as he sobs over it. In the morning, the world will be different and new. His brother will regain his strength and spirit, and leave this tent in search of Maedhros.

Only this time, he will do it all in front of Turgon’s very eyes.

“You cannot let them do this,” Aredhel hisses. “Turgon, you cannot allow it.”

“What?” It is more of a gulp than proper speech. “Who?”

She pounds her fist against the packed earth. “Our cousins. They are all of them weak, in their own ways. And we are not! We are strong…but for one thing. Our love of _them_. Fingon and Father and I—we’re all tangled up in a family that doesn’t deserve us. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I wanted to see Celegorm again, after all he’d done? I _did_ , that’s the truth of it. I hate myself for it, but I missed him so painfully. I missed him when we were dying of cold. Feanor couldn’t take that from us. He never succeeded in making Father hate him. He never separated Maedhros from Fingon. You know he must have tried. We always follow where they run, so resolutely, with such dreadful love. All of us except— _you_. You love _us_ , not them. Be the strongest, Turgon. Help Father, and Fingon, so that they can prevail. If we don’t, it’s just more madness and grief, and I can’t bear that—not if it’s needless.”

Turgon does as she did; he wipes his tears on his sleeve. 

His sister can be rather wise, sometimes.

They stare at each other, breathless, in the lantern glow.

“Do you have a handkerchief?” he asks, finally. His sleeve is dubious.

“Turgon.” The light isn’t particularly strong, but he can perceive every contour of her judgment. “I’ve never had handkerchiefs. Not even in New York.”

He laughs. In a way, it tears itself out—but he does laugh.

Wachiwi comes with the water, then. She is quiet and sober, as she rarely is. Aredhel tells her to stay, which isn’t quite fair, but which is likewise not the same as betrayal. Together, the women wash Fingon’s face and his hands.

When the mud and blood are cleared away, he looks like himself again. There is a furrow between his dark straight eyebrows that tells Turgon an old story:

Fingon is puzzling something out in his dreams.

 _I wonder what you saw_ , Turgon says in silence, to the brother he can admit (here) that he adores. _I wonder what it was like, to find him and free him, however you did._

There are hours until dawn. Sleep rears its head, a little, because Turgon has cried himself out and is comfortably tired. He stretches out on the quilt beside his brother, as they used to lie for warmth sometimes, during the horrid winter nights.

Aredhel sits up, sentinel-sharp, with her chin in her hands. At least—she holds the shape of watchfulness, but her softened breath reveals her. After a while, her head droops.

These last hours, pressed against each other, are neither blessing nor curse.

Turgon, before he drifts into the deep quiet, knows that the same must be true of the morning.


	2. Finrod

There can be neither preparation of mind nor body, when the impossible becomes true. Nonetheless, even while the first shock worries him like a dog with a rabbit between its teeth, Finrod remembers what Estrela told him.

Maedhros was beaten. Maedhros suffered.

Maedhros _lived_.

It is hard to look at the ragged heap in Gwindor’s trembling arms and call it _Maedhros_. But it was hard to stand by the glimmering waters outside Olwe’s wronged town, and call Maedhros a friend.

 _My boy! My boy—not you, not_ you _! Never you, I pray God—I pray—_

Finrod is not Fingon, begging for hope. Finrod remembers when he and Maedhros both were children, when they both were youths without fixed ambition, when they both were men.

They were strangers, as men. They met after the passage of time had forced out the truth, and though they had no chance to look squarely at each other and say, _it was lies, all of it_ —

Finrod at least _knew_ that all the way west.

Now, Finrod waits for his uncle, knowing only that the shock will fade, and horror will flare in its stead. Knowing that he is not impervious to pain.

Fingon had been left unconscious, a body spent, by two days in a secret hell. Gwindor, having offered hope for Fingon’s life, heaves out his own breaths as a dying man would. They must have been fleeing even until they reached the borders of this camp.

This camp—it is their safety. Finrod feels the burden of that.

Fingolfin speaks his name, then, but Turgon’s also. Turgon answers. Finrod, standing as straight as he can bear, forces himself to wait for the next order.

(He heard what Fingon said, before he fell forward, protecting Maedhros with what was left of his life.)

(Does it matter very much, that Finrod perceives the truth, when he has been wild with the loss of Maedhros and Fingon together, these past few days? For all his learned clarity of principle and decision, he has not been able to marshal his anger so as to direct it only at the deserving.)

The body spent, in Gwindor’s hold, does not look anything like Maedhros—though it can be no one else. Yet, it _is_ what anger looks like, written on a man…

Or a boy.

Yes, Finrod spent two years alone, and thus had the misfortune to leave his cousins young.

When Fingon (who will live) is passed to Turgon and Aredhel, Finrod springs into action beside his captain, without an order being spoken at all. Under the shadow of night, the branch-laced hood of trees, and the impatient snap of torches, every second counts for something.

“Uncle,” he says, gravely, as they close in around Gwindor’s hunched form. “Can we send the rest away? I do not think they should see what we must.”

(He ought to have offered this sooner, perhaps, but shock—shock, the fearful wolf—)

Fingolfin jolts a little: a man waking from another of many momentary stupors. “Haleth!” he cries. “If you would.”

And Haleth, who is here, just as Galadriel is here, and Beren, and a score more friends and new allies alike—Haleth orders the rest to leave them.

These are good people. They move off, Haleth with them. They leave Fingolfin and Finrod, and Maedhros who betrayed them both.

_Together, all together, as our family never was, save in breaking—_

How many times was this scene imagined? Finrod once countenanced it as a scene favouring his uncle’s wrath, and his own. Fingon and the rest would be shielded, protected from the fresh betrayals that would doubtless transpire as Feanor and his eldest son attempted to assuage the hurts or, more likely, excuse their own conduct.

But Finrod would not be swayed. Finrod would stand firm, would stare Maedhros down, would not quail from the charm and fire in his fey eyes. They were grey, those eyes, like most of his cousins’, but they held a different shade and brilliance than all the rest. Unflinching, then, Finrod would say,

_Tell me you did not know how you would hurt him._

(For it is Fingon who will always bleed for Maedhros’ sins.)

“He’s running hot with fever,” Gwindor says, passing his hand through matted hair. Yes, that is Maedhros’ face, there. Those bruised eyes are his, that swollen nose, his. Finrod trembles; had he stood firm, in another lifetime, the fists that made that face so might have been _his_.

Gwindor chokes, then, on whatever word he ventured, but in truth he need say nothing more.

“Uncle,” Finrod whispers, all the wind and rage knocked out of him. “Uncle, he is—they have—”

Maedhros is missing a hand.

Finrod lurches forward, as if this at last is a thing he cannot believe without making it out for himself. But Fingolfin holds him back. Fingolfin’s hand, whole and steady, clenches his shoulder.

“And you, Gwindor?” Fingolfin asks. “Are you hurt?”

“No—nothing to speak of. Your lad did all the fighting. Your brave lad.”

 _My boy_ , Fingolfin called him. Fingon, _brave lad_.

Was Maedhros brave? Or is it merely that his father was gone and his friends far from him, until it was too late?

“Still, you must be dead on your feet,” Fingolfin says. “Finrod and I will take—” His voice shifts, thinning almost to a snapping point, but he surges on. “We will take Maedhros. Fingon is our doctor, as you know, but until he is strong enough, we shall manage. Finrod! Help me.”

 _If you must_ , Finrod tells himself, in the panicked instant before his arms close around his cousin’s slumping body, _Think of him as someone else. Anyone else._

(Finrod helped to lay his aunt in her snowy grave. He feared he would lose his fingers, somewhere in the blur of those hours—those days and weeks.)

(Finrod feels broad shoulders, beneath a borrowed coat. These are his cousin’s indelible bones, but they are become a tragedy. He lifts, and must lift higher—must draw himself to his full height to match his cousin’s. Maedhros, recognizable: a tragedy.)

“I have him,” he says, because he is strong, not weakened by hunger and exertion like Gwindor is. Like—“I have him. Uncle, lead the way.”

 _You_ , he accuses. It could be Maedhros, or Finoglfin, or his own father…who never stepped where he did not need to step. _You never dreamed of this._

Fingolfin is no man for idle chatter, but he speaks _more_ when he has undergone a strain. Dragging himself from the task of his own body, Finrod listens for the rapid patter of his uncle’s thoughts.

“Estrela will not mind sharing her tent, though it may hurt her to see him. I shall warn her before you enter, Finrod—I shall give her a little warning. We must send someone—but we can do it ourselves, of course. Boil water and use what we recognize of Fingon’s things.” He gasps, there, and the shadow of his shoulders shake.

Of course. He is thinking of his son.

“Gwindor said he was not in danger,” Finrod soothes. Yet, how can Finrod soothe? His arms are clamped around puppet-strung bones. The head—the face—are turned against his breast. The handless arm swings at his knees. The long legs drag.

Finrod stumbles. Maedhros is very tall.

All of it is so very wrong as to be sickening, to be frightening, to be the end of Finrod’s many worlds.

He proposed freedom, for himself. He wanted to be a free man. To gain wisdom after knowledge, and so succeed where others had let passion drive them astray.

But if such a man is to be free and wise and happy, perhaps he must be all of those alone.

Love is fated: even the ancient ones knew fate to be a tangle of threads.

The darkness is unsteady around them. Snapping shadows chase cookfire flames into the air. The dense blackness swallows the sparks and the warmth together. From afar, the sentries’ torches watch their plodding progress without offering real aid. But even in a matter of few days, Fingolfin and Finrod have paced every path through this camp. They have concealed themselves from others’ ears for council; they have eaten with friends both new and old. They have watched unreachable Mithrim, from the shore.

“Here,” Fingolfin says, pausing before the crouching bulk of a tent. “Hold—let me go first.”

There can be neither preparation of mind nor body, when the impossible is on your doorstep.

Vaguely, he hears the exchange of voices. Finrod should be alert; should hear what they are saying. He tries to focus, bearing up the dead (no, not quite dead) weight in his arms.

“Sticks, take Frog with you—” That is Estrela.

And then his uncle: “Finrod, bring him in.”

Finrod passes through the opened flap. He keeps his eyes on anything but the waiting woman. The bellying canvas ceiling; the poke-holed tin lanterns. Yet, he observes that Estrela, for the first time since he has known her, stands on her feet without support.

Beside her is the low bed, and with his uncle’s help, he levers Maedhros down upon it.

The lantern light, in this enclosed space, is enough light to see by.

So. Finrod, documenter of the undiscovered, sees the coat twisted around him. The crooked, rag-clad legs and misshapen feet. The dark blood on his ugly face— _Maedhros, ugly!_ —and the dark blood on the bandaged wrist.

Only a wrist.

“ _Russandol_ ,” Estrela sobs, despite herself. For once her voice is muffled not by her misshapen mouth, but by her hands.

This, it seems, was a mistake.

“Russandol?” shrieks a younger, sharper voice, and the edge of the tent ripples as two small bodies roll in beneath it. Finrod recognizes Sticks and Frog—strange names belonging to the smallest rescues from the Mountain prison. They are on their hands and knees; Sticks scrambles to her feet. Frog doesn’t.

Frog starts screaming.

“Lord!” cries Fingolfin, stepping between them and the bed. “Children, you must not be here. Estrela, Finrod, can you help me?”

“You’ve killed him!” Sticks howls. “It’s like Soldier said—”

“ _Sticks_.”

Gwindor has arrived behind them, with Beren at his side. Finrod, who is crouched by his cousin’s body, cranes his neck to see this. In doing so, he looks full away from Maedhros. That seems dangerous—he half-expects to find him further changed, when he turns back.

(Perhaps the flesh will be hanging off his face rather than merely battered against it.)

“He’s _dead_ ,” Sticks cries, above Frog’s shrill keening.

“He’s _not_!” Gwindor snaps. Haggard, bone-weary, but the man is a marvel.

They forgot him, after they took Maedhros from him. That is an insult for which Finrod shall not soon forgive himself. Yet he wonders, too, how a man like this could ever have been kept down as a disregarded slave. There is power in him.

Gwindor presses on: “Doctor Fingon went and found him. I’ve spoken to him myself. He’s been a bit bashed around the head. You’ve seen it before. Let his family stay with him, Sticks. They’re full-grown men and they’ll look after him, you hear? But not with a couple of brats hanging around.”

Then Beren steps forward, calm and steady. His hand—the scarred one, that the bullet went through when he was little older than a boy—curls loosely at his side. Finrod’s eyes follow it across the tent. When Beren crouches in front of the shivering Frog-boy, he lifts that same hand to rest lightly on the child’s head.

“There now, Frog,” he says, very quietly. “Russandol is sleeping. You told me how he likes to sleep, didn’t you? Let’s take Sticks away now.”

Frog stops his shrieking.

Sticks, shaking like a leaf, has at least ceased hurling abuse. She mumbles, “Can’t take me away.”

“Just for a little while,” Beren says, stroking Frog’s hair and looking up at her.

Finrod has two younger brothers, but they were better friends to each other than they were to him. That is not their fault. He always preferred his own company, his cousins’ company. There seemed so much time ahead, for restlessness. Surely in middle-age, he would return to them…would settle amidst his family and make a better showing against the past generation’s flawed attempts.

Even before he was faced by death and ruin, by the present moment, he knew that flimsy future was barred.

Sometimes, then, he has thought of Beren as another chance at the fraternal bond; a gift for a failure, maybe, but a gift nonetheless.

Looking at Beren now, at the unassuming strength of him, he realizes how wrong he was to judge Beren the one in need of guidance.

Hours later, the scene has changed again. Feanor no longer has a place in it, either for vengeance or renown. Maedhros…is all of it, though with no chance for cunning explication, for charm or power. He is more wound than body, angry and exposed.

His skin, where it is not bruised or broken, is too thin and pale over his bones. His eyes are shut. What breath he has is leveled by sleep. Sleep is the closest thing to mercy that is left him. That, and a broken fever sweating down his brow.

Hours later, water boils over one of the outside fires. Finrod brings it in by means of pails, as heavy as he can safely carry them. With it, Estrela washes rags and bandages. The rags are hung to cool, and the bandages to dry, over a makeshift rack of branches that Gwindor gathered. The ground beneath that rack becomes muddy after only a little while. They must be careful not to drag new filth to Maedhros’ bed.

His work done, Gwindor sleeps now, in the corner of the tent. He sleeps despite himself: he sat grimly watching for some time, weeping in the silent manner of hard-bitten men. But nature _will_ take its victories, no matter where it finds them. In time, sleep gave mercy to Gwindor, too.

Fingolfin and Finrod and Estrela are left with their duty. Finrod has the sharpest knife, and after it has been cleaned (Fingon taught them this, but Haleth’s people are similarly meticulous in their habits), he uses it to cut away the ragged shirt and trousers, cleans it again, and tucks it in his belt.

Fingolfin kneels at Maedhros’ head. “We had to strip the bodies in our long winter,” he says quietly, as if Finrod demanded justification. “For the warmth of their coats, which we sorely needed. We knew they would have been right, in doing the same to us had the deaths been ours. This is nobler than that, nephew, I promise you. Dignity remains. Dignity will always remain, while we can guard it.”

“I know,” Finrod answers, through his teeth. But he is startled, when his uncle looks at him in surprise.

Surprise, at being answered—

_Oh._

_You are not the only nephew here._

His eyes swarm with tears, and he returns to his task: washing away the crusted grime from Maedhros’ left arm, the one that has a hand. The palm of that hand is corrugated by callouses, old burns, and little flecks of stone, as if it was ground against the earth for a long time. The nails are split, shredded, or missing entirely. The fingers are bruised and crooked.

The forearm of the arm is largely unharmed, though the wrist is ringed by the same sort of scar that oxen bear around their necks. It was shackled, then, or roped habitually and tightly. There is still a shackle on his left ankle, forged of heavy iron. Turgon struck off dozens of those; he will have to do it again.

A wave: grief.

_His arm. See only his arm._

Finrod bites his lips, his tongue. He trains his eyes on the cloth in his hand, on the grey water running down.

“A new rag?” Estrela inquires, faintly.

“Please.”

Fingolfin tends to the abdomen, the breast—work that Finrod would be a weak child over. Work he cannot so much as _watch_ , having seen what is carved and burned and beaten there.

It is enough, to wince deeply over the red brand-mark in the still-pale flesh of Maedhros’ inner arm.

It is enough to gasp in untethered loss and sorrow, at what is no longer printed on a shoulder no longer whole.

 _I’ve seen its twin_ , he said gaily to Fingon, when they were young. _Whose idea was it, yours or his?_

“Finrod,” Estrela murmurs, crawling to his side. She must be exhausted; the night is growing old, but she speaks kindly. “Would you rather I do it? I am no doctor, either, but I have seen these hurts before.”

They had to lift him up, between the three of them, to see to his back. Now they have laid him down again. Finrod did not know until now, what a whip could do.

“All of them?” he asks Estrela. He swore he would not cast his gaze about needlessly, but his eyes are drawn to where Fingolfin, with both hands, gently turns Maedhros’ warped jaw from side to side.

“Most of them,” Estrela answers. “There are new savageries.”

 _He was very beautiful, your cousin._ She said it as though it were a past thing only because she thought him dead.

Finrod sways, meeting the force of his own weakness.

“I thought I could bear it,” he whispers.

“You thought you could bear death,” Estrela answers. “Not what life like this could mean.”

“It is still life.” Fingolfin looks at them. With the false age of weariness hanging over him, he looks more than ever like Finwe once did. “Do you know what I would give, to have my wife and son returned to me? My father—yes, even my brother. We are not staring into hell, not while we look on a living body. This is _our_ Maedhros, no matter what has happened to him.”

“You believe that?” Estrela asks—not in disbelief herself, but with a child’s aching desire.

(Finrod understands how she asks it because of what is in his heart, too.)

“You have not known him long, ma’am,” Fingolfin answers. “Finrod has, and I have. I have known him longer than anyone else in this camp, or the one beyond it. All his life, in point of fact.” His hands have not released their gentle hold. “From the time he was a child, I loved him like a son. I had no right to, you understand. I did not act as a father should, for all the while, he _had_ a father. But he has none now, none living. Nor do I. Nor do many. While we are living, then, we shall do what we can for those who live also.”

He pauses then, and lowers his hands from Maedhros’ cheeks.

“Fingon sealed the deadliest wound, it seems,” he says. “I trust he will know what to do for the rest.”

“I hope so,” Estrela says. Hunched where she is, her hands twist against her knees. Finrod wonders if she would like also to offer Maedhros a gentle touch. He tried to keep his own hands light and careful, but each scrape of the rag against scarred skin felt newly abrading.

But with Fingolfin’s words spoken, bearing them up, some moment or some despair has passed them by. It leaves them quiet, if not wholly peaceful.

Peace is impossible because Maedhros, and what he now is not, can no longer be hidden, not even by filth. He is clean; his ruin stands out in stark relief.

_He was very beautiful, your cousin._

Finrod covers his face in his hands. He kneels; he collapses, resting on his heels. He breaks that hard-won quiet with sobs, knowing that the iron tang on his tongue is Maedhros’ blood.

Fingon did not cease to love Maedhros at Ulmo’s Bridge. Finrod could have. Thereafter, he fought for hope of love following forgiveness— _earned_ forgiveness—and he thought himself just.

He sees now, written in vicious red, in seared brands and vicious blow-marks, that his price for forgiveness is one he does not wish to set.

_There is no price._

“Come now,” Fingolfin says. “We will leave the bandages for Fingon—but let us cover him with what clean cloth we have.”

Some recently laundered shirts, procured from the store-packs that have waited beside Estrela’s bed, are used to protect under the rough wool of the outer blanket.

Thusly covered, only Maedhros’ face and snarled hair are visible. It is still a sight to chill the blood and stab at the remembering heart.

Finrod controls his weeping.

“Uncle,” he begins, as if he would freshly offer allegiance. He wants, at least, to say that he believes: in life, and hope, and wholeness of more than the body.

Finrod has never been particularly religious, but he knows that a saint gazes out of Fingolfin’s eyes.

Before he can say all that he would (and maybe his uncle already understands it) they are brought back to their existence in an encampment shared with many other people. Voices rise some distance away, as if in argument, and then footsteps strike the earth.

The lanterns are not their only light, now; have not been for some hours. The light inside the tent was tinged with grey at first, but soon it warmed. Now the lanterns (twice relit) are pale against the power of the rising sun.

The tent-flap is torn open. The head thrust in is all a-tangle: dark braids and yellow threads. The head, of course, belongs to Fingon.

Fingon is clad in the same clothes as he left and returned in, two days ago. He reeks of blood and sweat and the road. Nonetheless, he plants his feet firmly on the ground inside the tent and demands, with tears altering the edges of his voice,

“Father, why did you not wake me?”

Fingolfin stands. “Hush,” he says, with a sternness Finrod did not expect. “You needed rest, for what you must now do. Get to it, Doctor. Relieve these two, for they have worked tirelessly all night.”

“These three,” Estrela interjects softly. Gwindor is still hunched in the corner of the tent.

“These three,” Fingolfin agrees, his arms folded over his chest and his chin thrust out, as if he does not observe at all how Fingon’s chin is wobbling. “Finrod, Estrela, Gwindor. Pray use whatever quarters you need, to sleep.”

“And what about you?” Fingon asks, wide-eyed. His hands are clenched against his sides. Finrod longs to embrace him. How _Fingon_ he still is—and will always be!

“Me?” Fingolfin asks, and then there is a softening: a gradual return of the gentle father who stood between the broken prodigal and the hungry watches of the night these hours past. “I shall stay, Doctor. Of course, I shall stay.”


	3. Fingolfin

Gwindor wakes, and protests being sent away, but Estrela and Finrod persuade him to go and find a little food. Fingolfin watches him go; sees how he walks heavily between them, his body still half-crippled by weariness. Gwindor must trust Fingolfin, or more likely, he trusts Fingon.

They rescued Maedhros together, after all.

Fingolfin does not know when he shall hear the whole of that story—if ever. Haleth led the assault of the high mountain; Fingolfin was content to attack the supposed stronghold of the more obvious enemy: the railroad outpost. He has not gone where Fingon must have gone. Looking at his son, and at the boy in the bed, he knows it is not the time to ask what Fingon saw.

When Fingon speaks, he plucks at a parallel string of thought. “You looked at him,” he says, his chin thrust forward, his shoulders thrust back, his (two) hands fisted at his sides. “You—” Then he shakes his head, still not seeking his father’s eyes, and steps forward like a man going to his death. “No. I must see for myself.”

Fingolfin had bold words for Finrod, who was wise beyond his years, and for Estrela, with her gentle voice and brutal face. He has none for Fingon.

He loves him too much.

Fingon kneels by Maedhros’ side, and stares at his own upturned hands. Then he rolls back on his haunches, rises, and paces to the corner of the tent. “Is there water boiling, still?”

He must have seen the cauldron over the fire outside.

“Yes. I can fetch more.”

“I am filthy,” Fingon explains. He sounds more like the doctor Fingolfin hadn’t wanted him to be, once. “I can’t tend to him with dirty hands. I—I’ve done that already, and he’s burning up—multiple infections, no doubt, and he can d-die from that, even if he doesn’t—”

“His fever broke in the night.”

Fingon’s shoulders slump. Relief, perhaps, but Fingolfin’s mind is irrevocably filled with the sight of Maedhros, scrawled with hatred, bludgeoned by destruction, and he cannot—he cannot know peace.

“Wash your hands and face, then,” he says, swallowing his grief. “Tie your hair back. What—what would Olorin tell you to do?”

“Strange that you should ask that question now,” Fingon says, taking the last of the wet rags. “When you know how little that has mattered, thus far.”

“Do you not think of Olorin, sometimes?”

“I do.”

“Well. He was a wise man, and we have never seen anything like this.” He says that, and thinks: _I have never seen you learn of anything like this._

No, Fingolfin did not foresee that it would come to just the two of them, him and his boy, alone against the next epoch. But maybe it has always been theirs to last and to long, ever since the bridge.

Fingon washes his face. He ties back his matted hair and washes his hands. Maedhros’ hair is another loss, though Fingolfin is not one for vanity: it is dry and ragged at the ends, stained dark with mud and sweat and blood.

It used to be bright and beautiful, soft and curling. Maedhros, when he was Nerdanel’s Maitimo, was an uncommonly beautiful child. Fingolfin held to the image as long as he could, of the polite little creature in starched skirts, patting Fingon’s cannon-ball baby head and declaring to Fingolfin—

_This is a very fine little boy._

The memory forces Fingolfin to squeeze his parched eyes shut, feeling the sting of rising tears without their water. He opens his eyes only when Fingon cries out.

“ _No_ ,” his boy sobs, with the back of his hand pressed to his lips, “God, no! What—”

Fingolfin does not feel like a father at all, in strength. He joins his son nonetheless, on the dried-out earth on the other side of Maedhros.

“Do not disturb him with your cries, Fingon,” he whispers. “Keep quiet, for him.”

They draw back the blankets farther down together. Fingon shakes, and he bites down on the knuckles of his free hand. Tears river down his sun-browned cheeks.

Fingolfin himself wonders if it is love, or a weak and empty heart, that keeps him from weeping with his son. His tongue is as dry as cotton in his mouth.

 _Feanorian_ , he sees; then the black bruises amid the still-red scars, and worse than the name—

Worse than last night, he must now see it through Fingon’s eyes.

But Fingon has had too much. He hides his face in his elbow, choking and snuffling as softly as he can against his stained shirtsleeve. It is no good, Fingolfin knows; Fingon _must_ see, in the brightening day. He is a doctor, as his father prayed he would not be, and under that oath he can never turn from blood, from pain, from the end of life itself, while he has strength and breath in him.

Fingolfin wishes he could weep with him, like he might have, when he was Fingon’s age—or like he did two nights ago, when he thought Fingon gone forever.

Maybe it _is_ only weariness, and not weakness. Maybe it is the bitterness of watching how the doctor’s oath crushes while it sustains. At least, he does not leave his son unacknowledged. He stretches his hand out over the valley of Maedhros’ sunken ribs, and fits it around the curve of Fingon’s neck.

For is it so hard to understand? If you were grown, and a delicate, fire-haired creature praised the thing you loved the most, you would love that little one always. You would be charmed; you would be moved. You would delight in the joys of that child, and grieve when he was a child no more.

And if you were the baby, wide-eyed and stubborn, that that child praised, you would worship that child. He would always be older than you, taller than you, wiser than you.

That child has grown, and become a wound instead of a man. You might have blamed him for that once, whichever of the two you are who knew him _then_. Now you know how little choice he had in it; indeed, no choice at all.

Feanor never saw him like this—Feanor who met death instead of his little son grown tall, thrown wide open to knives and brands and bloodlust.

For the first time in his life, Fingolfin wonders if Feanor was a coward.

“Father, make me strong,” Fingon murmurs, lifting his head. “Please, I _can’t_ be like this. I couldn’t—I couldn’t save Argon, and I’m blubbering now instead of, instead of—”

“Argon couldn’t be saved.” Fingolfin is glad, suddenly, for his lack of tears. It lets his voice be level and clear. “I knew it then, though I did not wish to. You have already saved your cousin, Fingon. You brought him back. His fever has broken, and these wounds, though vicious, do not appear to threaten his life. What he chiefly needs is care; he needs to be nursed to health. Given water, then broth, then bread—oh, I don’t know the proper order of things. _You_ are the one who has studied for years, and kept us in better health than anyone else could have, these long months. Do not let your fear of the past freeze you now. Start at the top of his head, if you must, and we’ll work down together. Give me orders, son. I shall make a poor assistant, but a willing one.”

Fingon nods, and whispers, “I need to wash my hands again.”

While he does so, Fingolfin permits himself one indulgence: pressing a hand against Maedhros’ cooled brow. The old blood gathered beneath his eyes gives a ghoulish effect, but the swelling continues to settle. His nose, shockingly, is not crooked, though it is dreadfully bruised, and crested by a narrow gash across the bridge.

His jaw—Fingolfin is not a doctor. He can see that it is arranged all wrong, but he cannot be sure if it is broken.

 _You must have fought_ , he thinks, tracing the side of his thumb over the arch of the right eyebrow. Maedhros has a little of the dark Finwean coloring; his eyebrows are auburn rather than pale, and his lashes are black at the roots. _For them to treat you so, you must have fought._

The brands are old. The cruel words are new. And Estrela said, last night, that it had been months since he was whipped, and almost as long since his leg was the broken.

Yet he fought, if Gwindor and Estrela are to be believed. He made his father’s weapons, and destroyed them. He set the stage for a skirmish that Haleth turned into a battle, and won.

“They broke his nose,” Fingon says, hushed, when he has prodded his fingers lightly against it. “It…I can feel it shift under my touch. But—but it’s been set again.”

“Not by you?”

“Not by me.”

They can’t call it mercy, so they don’t.

“What about his jaw?” Fingolfin asks.

Fingon’s hands settle around it. He winces, but his voice holds firm. “It is dislocated. Olorin showed me how to realign it, but it’s an unpleasant business.” He douses his hands with medicinal whiskey. “I shall have to reach into his mouth and force it, if the muscles will allow me. It is better done before he wakes.”

Fingolfin takes heart, a little. Fingon has hope.

“Hold his shoulders, Father?”

Fingolfin does.

With his thumbs, Fingon reaches into Maedhros’ mouth, keeping the other four fingers of each hand beneath the chin to brace his movements. Fingolfin watches carefully, as if he will be called upon to do the same; to straighten a face beaten askew.

“With his jaw canted so,” Fingon says, a trifle breathlessly, “He can’t clench his teeth. That’s—” he stops short, brow furrowing. “One of his back molars is gone,” he says, in a small voice.

“But the rest of his teeth are there?”

“Yes.” Fingon peers in. “From what I can see, they’re worn but not rotted. That’s something.”

“Indeed,” Fingolfin agrees. “That’s something.”

Fingon nods, half to himself, and then says, “Now, brace him.”

The relocation is one powerful wrench, and a sickening, popping sound.

A deep groan stirs in Maedhros’ breast.

It is the first sound he has made, in Fingolfin’s hearing, other than breathing. Somehow, it is a new sort of pain.

“Will he wake?” He asks this of his son, the doctor.

Fingon shakes his head, after removing his hands, washing them again, and then testing his cousin’s pulse. “No. I…I almost wonder if he wants to wake.”

“Perhaps not.” Fingolfin is treading on delicate ground; on thin ice. It is a path to which he is well used, in one or another…and yet. “He has endured so much. His spirit, as well as his body, must crave rest. It is good that he senses his safety, here.”

Fingon blinks for a long moment. Then he says, “We must go further.”

“Wait.” Fingolfin holds up a hand; realizes, an instant later, that the gesture _could_ seem like a mockery. “Look, how much his face is already his own again.”

“That’s just the trouble,” Fingon replies. “That hurts—oh, Father, if you only _knew_!”

A commotion outside distracts them from the aching inches of scarred skin remaining; even from the way the fingers of the left hand curl towards the palm like a child’s would in sleep.

Fingolfin springs to his feet, bidding Fingon stay where he is, but it is no good. The flap of the tent is drawn back— _torn_ back—and a shrill, Feanorian voice cries—

“Here! He’s _here_!”

To Fingolfin, Celegorm has always seemed the least like one of Feanor’s sons. Perhaps he has his mother’s broader Scottish bones. Perhaps he scorned Feanor in a way that made him unlike him, rather than one more opposing, still-reflecting mirror.

Fingolfin does not know him _well_ , of course. He was never allowed to know any of them well.

But Maedhros—

“It’s Maitimo,” the little one says wildly. Amras—or is it Amrod? Red-haired and thin-faced, and not so little after all. He skates across the floor and falls to his knees beside the silent figure of his eldest brother. Celegorm’s massive wolfhound slinks in after him, somehow more unobtrusive than the human visitors. Amras’ voice rises, keening, howling. “It’s Maitimo, it’s _Maitimo_ —”

“I can see for myself,” Celegorm snaps, so that his dog snaps still and straight, too. Fingolfin cannot help but recognize how rage settles on him (the same way it did on his father). Rage makes lines of violence, and worse than violence, _pain_.

(Not so different after all.)

Fingolfin was never allowed—

(Aloud, leading, he was grave. _We will have their answers. We will not take vengeance, Turgon, Aredhel, Turgon. We will have their answers._ In grief, silent, he shook with cold fury. _But_. Along the soft edges of his months-long weariness, his arms felt their old child-desire, and all he could _feel_ , even without seeing—for one could not see something that had never been—)

Fingon has not been idle, while two cousins and a hound break into his makeshift hospital. He is on his feet, not preventing Amras from reaching Maedhros’ side, nor chivying Huan, but nearly crashing into Celegorm in his haste to intercept _him_. The tent is a large one, but will be a cramped space for a brawl nonetheless.

There can be no brawl. Not with an invalid in the middle. Fingolfin wonders if the dog will turn vicious, but it does not regard Fingon with anything like ire.

Still: what does the dog matter, when its irate master is by?

“Fingon,” Fingolfin warns. “Stand aside.”

Fingon is white with rage. “ _Never_.”

Celegorm is taller than Fingon; most men are, and Celegorm is a man now. His hands tighten to fists. “You are traitors!” he cries, but though he said _I can see for myself_ , Celegorm does not look _down_. Does not look to where one brother kneels, and another sleeps. “You went in search, without a _word_ to us. And now, you—you did not tell us—”

“Fingon returned last night,” Fingolfin says, before his son can make this a real war with his words. The dog shuffles to Maedhros, sniffs, then stretches out beside him. “Dead tired,” Fingolfin continues. “He woke an hour ago. I saw to your brother, during the night, tending wounds that—I fear—will cause you great pain to see.”

“ _You know nothing_ ,” Celegorm hisses, provoked as Fingolfin did not intend, and then he rushes forward to fall beside Amras and his giant dog, his hands tearing back the blanket that covers Maedhros to his shoulders.

Like their father, the sons put their flesh and souls to sharp things.

Things that can hurt them.

Fingolfin tightens all his body, guessing at that hurt.

Amras scrambles back, wheezing with frightened horror. The sound that Celegorm makes is different. Fingolfin can never describe it, thereafter, and he does not try.

“Oh, _Celegorm_ ,” Fingon says, forgetting his animosity amidst the rush of his natural compassion. “I’m sorry, so very sorry—”

Celegorm staggers as he rises. His hair, which is not at all like his father’s, nor yet like his mother’s either, hangs about his face. But Fingolfin’s eyes meet his for one instant, after which he is gone from the tent. His dog follows, slowly loping.

Fingolfin saw and remembered that terror of grief. It is a bullet in Argon’s breast, for him.

For Celegorm, it is Maedhros as he is now.

Fingon puts his hands over his face and sobs. Fingolfin does not know rightly if he should try and comfort Amras, or his own son, but Amras decides for him.

He sprints after Celegorm, and the scene is remade.

( _Along the soft edges of his months-long weariness, Fingolfin had felt a lie and a hope in one: the warmth of his brother’s embrace_.)

Fingolfin moves through the silence. Over the dried mud, past the empty thatch of branches. He takes his son in his arms. _He_ is taller than Fingon; he will forever be taller than Fingon.

 _The French height_ , Feanor used to call it.

Feanor was always cruelest, somehow, about the small features of life that no one could change.

Fingolfin strokes Fingon’s overgrown hair, and kisses his brow, and tries not to be haunted by the thought that has plagued him all night:

Maedhros suffered _his_ torments alone.

“My darling,” Fingolfin says—Anaire’s old word. She liked that it was soft and fluid, though it was English and not her own tongue. “Fingon— _Fingon_.”

“I took his hand,” Fingon gasps. “I made him so, Father. I ruined him. His hand! _I cut off his hand_.”

It is true that, in the past hour, Fingon has not responded with shock at the sight of that most noticeable wound—only with quiet, controlled aversion.

Fingolfin should have known that for what it was.

“Tell me,” he says now, when the first wave has crashed and receded, in his mind, “Was it necessary?”

“What?”

“You are a doctor. You have performed amputations. You have done so to save men’s lives. Was it _necessary_?”

Fingon gazes, red-eyed and damp-cheeked, over his shoulder. He is looking at Maedhros, and his brow is all creased in the lines that used to worry Anaire, when he was a boy.

( _A fine little boy_.)

“They shall mark the young forehead!” she would say.

Fingolfin had reached up, on such occasions, to feel the pattern of lines above his own eyes. Now, on an impulse (quite unlike himself, but what are _like_ and _unlike_ anymore?) he presses another kiss to Fingon’s temple, before the answer is even made.

“Yes,” Fingon replies, finally. “Yes, it was necessary. They had hammered him to the mountain itself, Father.”

A shudder, that. A horror, unfathomed by the father and faced by the son. “Then you did what you could.”

“Yes.” (Stronger now.)

“Then,” Fingolfin says, knowing they must go back and see the brands, the violated hips, the lines of the lash and iron alike—knowing they must see them together—“You did right.”

(God, give them strength.)

Fingon is washing his hands again. He is always busy with cleanliness, that boy. “I know I did,” he says, chewing his lip. (An old trick of—) “But that’s not enough to comfort me. It _should_ be—hang it all , maybe it never was. It is only…do you think he will hate me?”

 _Maedhros?_ Fingolfin wishes to say. _Maedhros could never hate you._

But here is the trick of pain after violence: the scene changes.

Fingolfin must admit in his heart, if not to his son, that he no longer knows who Maedhros is.


End file.
